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Show (SdDBISMY 0& f Co1. Robert L.Scoft WN.U. RELEASE HTVfilV ! Tht story that far: Robert Scott, a sell-mid sell-mid West Point (raduate, wlm bis wtnrs at Kelly Field, Teias. lie li lrnt to Panama, where bit real pursuit training train-ing I begun In a P-12S. When the war comet closer be has been Instructor lor several years, and tears be will get no combat flying. At the outbreak of war he pleads with many Generals asking lor a cbanct to light, and at last the opportunity oppor-tunity comes. He says goodby to his wife and child and leaves lor Florida, where he picks up bis Flying Fortress. After some flying Instruction (from a former for-mer student of his) he flys the big ship 12,000 miles to India. Here he becomes a ferry pilot flying supplies Into Burma, but he does not like this Job. CHATTER IX We kept low to the flat country coun-try now, so that it wouldn't be silhouetted sil-houetted against the sky. Moreover the trees under us caused the olive-drab olive-drab of the ship to blend in, making us harder to see. I thought many times that we couldn't gut lower; but we kept going down until I know If the wheels had been extended we'd have been taxying. I guess we were both a little bit nervous as we peered ahead (or any little dot that would mean a Jap. Fly specks on the windshield and you get lots of them when flying as low as we were scared us many times. I could feel the palms of my bands sweating as the tension increased. in-creased. ' Finally, straight ahead, I saw a lone column of smoke and thought it was Shwebo. The Japs must already al-ready have bombed that too. We kept right on going, expecting any minute to see about eighteen Zeros jn our tail Bombs had started these Ares, and where Jap bombers were, fighters could not be far away. The smoke plume grew larger and blacker black-er as we came nearer, until we could see the glow of the fires and the ticking flames. We both must have automatically concluded that the burning town was Shwebo, tor without more than a glance to check the map we headed for the Southeast South-east corner of the town, where the field was supposed to be. Then I saw them, high overhead-three overhead-three planes. But I almost sighed in relief, for they were only Jap bombers no fighters yet. We kept on low, trying to find the field, while more bombs blasted the town. After searching for several minutes we realized that we were looking into the smoke of the wrong town, for farther South we saw another smoke column, and after checking our position posi-tion by a canal to the West, we agreed that this town was Kinu and that Shwebo was ten miles South. Shwebo was burning too, and, as we learned later, had been bombed only minutes before we arrived. Jap fighters had accompanied the bombers. bomb-ers. So once again some hand of Providence had intervened had made us mistake Kinu for Shwebo and waste a little time circling. Colonel Haynes saw the field at Shwebo and pulled the big trans-port trans-port around like a fighter, slipping her In and sitting her down like a feather-bed. We taxied over to the shade to try to partially hide the ship, and I stayed to guard the Douglas while he went to see General Gen-eral StilwelL You could hear the start officers and the soldiers yelling, yell-ing, and see them throwing their tin helmets In the air. Jack Bclden of Life magazine told me later that they had never expected an American Ameri-can ship to get through, and that when the white star of the U. S Army Air Force was Identified, they had even sung "God Bless America." Ameri-ca." But to us right then. America seemed a very, very long way oil While Colonel Haynes went for General Stilwell, I stationed the crew around the ship, and we watched the sky with Tommy guns. There was a dead feeling in the air the smell of smoke and of human flesh from the burning town-and I expected any moment to see Jap Zeros diving on the transport There we stood with our vlrltablc pop guns, waiting for Jap cannon. Just a tew minutes later a Jeep drove up and C. V. Haynes Jumped out, saying that most of the staff was on the way behind him but that General Stilwell wasn't going. At my look of surprise, he added that the General was going to wslk out that he refused to be evacuated by air. Well, for the life of me I couldn't see what face would be saved, for the British Army had gone up the road to the North, and most of the Chinese armies were also on. the way out. Perhapa the General knew things that I didn't know. But I remember th it Colonel Haynes and I talked it over during the minutes while we waited for the Staf to get aboard. We wanted to take General Stilwell out if we had to use force; after all, he was the Commanding General of all Amrrl-tan Amrrl-tan forces In China. Burma, and India, In-dia, and we knew he was to have a ery slim chance of walklog out to India through Burma. I guess U wt hd captured General Gen-eral Stilwell and taken him back to Chungking we'd have been court-martialed court-martialed md shot But we didn't much care what hsprfn thn nr' ay. Burma was falling, and there seemed to bt never-ending stream of Japs turning North. I guess we thought had very lim chance t tver getting out alive. After all. t'd bem flying around bombed Burmese towna all morning, and when you expect to aee Jap fighters Any minute (or hours, with you In an unarmed ship, and then get to destination and the General won't go things just don't much matter. We loaded the anxious staff and took off for Calcutta, with over forty passengers. We could easily have taken from fifty to seventy, but the staff colonel whom we instructed to give the signal when the load was aboard evidently lost count, for he came up and told Colonel Haynes that all were inside. As we crossed South-Central Burma Bur-ma towards the town of Chitta-gong, Chitta-gong, we planned to come back that night and take General Stilwell out if we had to trick him Into getting aboard. We crossed the many mouths of the Ganges in one of the worst rains that I've ever seen, and soon landed in the humid heat of Calcutta. While we were reservic-ing reservic-ing for the second trip of some five hundred miles. Joplin landed from Assam, and Colonel Haynes had him unload his cargo and take off immediately imme-diately for Shwebo. Once again we ourselves flew through black rain across the Ganges into Burma, but when we landed we found that all had been evacuated except wounded British and American soldiers. In the half darkness, for the night was lighted by the fires of the burning villages, we loaded them on and took them to Calcutta. General Stilwell with a few of his staff, his ADC, Colonel Dorn, and Jack Belden, war correspondent, had gone on to the North on the long trek to India by way of the Uyu and Chindwln Rivers to the Manipur Road. For weeks no one knew where he was. One of the officers In this last cargo car-go handed me an itinerary that the General had given him, and I resolved re-solved to try to drop food and vitamin vita-min capsules to the party as It made its way to the West. The projected pro-jected itinerary would lead them from Shwebo North to the Uyu Rlv- - . 2 h if O o LJL I Gen. Archibald Wavell, who was commander-in-chief of British forces In India. cr. down that stream to the Chind-win Chind-win at Homalin, then down the Chin-dwin Chin-dwin to Sittaung and Tamu, and thence on the Manipur Road to Im-phal. Im-phal. Using it, I expected to be able to contact them and drop the necessary neces-sary food; Joplin and I even figured we could land on a sand bar in the Chindwln and pick them up. We planned all this out the next day as we flew back home, four hundred miles to the Northeast, transporting our first Jeep into Assam by plane. But though we began next day to fly Into Burma to contact General Stilwell' party, again we found that there was many a slip 'twixt the cup. etc., even when one had an itinerary. After I'd crossed the Naga Hills in my single P-43. 1 would follow the Chindwln South until I came to Homalin. Then I'd turn to the East up the river, flying right down in the canyon formed by the thick Jungle trees. I carried a Very pistol to Identify myself, but learned that we had no air-to ground liaison code with which to establish our Identity to General StilwelL As substitute I decided to fire a green light, figuring that anything but red would Indicate that 1 was friendly. Though I saw party after party, there was no way of identifying that of the General. I marked their positions posi-tions on my map. and we went back later in a transport plane and dropped food to all of them food, medicines, and blankets. Later I dropped letters attempting to estab-i estab-i lish a code between his party and our ships, so that If he wanted us to land when he reached the Chind-win. Chind-win. he could signal us with a panel. We were never able to contact him, but we continued to drop food to every ev-ery party of refugees we saw. As the days stretched Into weeks and no news came of General Stilwell' Stil-well' s party, we Just dropped bags of rice and medicines to all parties, whether they v. ere led by a General Gen-eral or by a British sergeant On my single-ship escort trips I noted (hat burning barges ere floating down the Chind in. South of Tamu. One afternoon I saw four big river-boats river-boats burning t the docks of the town where the Manipur Road began. be-gan. I reported this to the British. Then, about three weeks from the day we had flown down to get the staff out of Shebo. I met General Stilwell end his tired group at the little Tinsukla railroad station. I told him that practically all the Air Corps officers In Asia were waiting for him outside. That night as we gathered at tea '' planter Josh Reynolds' house, we had the greatest gathering of Generals' Gen-erals' stars that all Assam had ever seen. There was Wavell, Alexander who made on that occasion the classic statement: "The situation In Burma is very confused" Brereton, Naiden, Bissell, Stilwell, Hearne and Siebert. Just about everyone ex- ; cept General Chennault, and be was very busy getting the AVO out of ; Loiwing and up to Paoshan. Burma had at last fallen. The evacuation of these Chinese i armies from Burma to India and 1 China now gave us more adventures ' in the A. B. C. Ferrying Command. They were scattered all over north- ! ern Burma, from West of Myitkyina. j North to Shimbyang and Putao. It ! was our Job now to drop rice, salt, and medicines to these thousands of I starving soldiers. I remember that as I first saw Burma it used to look to me like the greatest hunting country coun-try in all the world, completely wild and unspoiled. And it was just that but there was nothing to hunt for evidently there wasn't anything for even the animals to eat Once when it was clear enough to see the surrounding country, I was aware of a strange sight We'd been dropping rice at Shimbyang when I saw some villages, and there again I noticed something that I realized now I'd been seeing through all the Burmese towns white cattle, the bullocks of the East It started me to thinking: How could people starve when there were hundreds and thousands thou-sands of cattle In northern Burma? That afternoon I got to talking over the food situation with one of the best of the ferry pilots, Capt. John Payne. He said he'd, looked the field over at Putao or Fort Hertz, as the British called it and although it had been condemned by the British for the landing of aircraft, he could land a transport on the short runway. The entire length of that field was slightly less than one thousand feet end if any other pilot than Joplin or Payne had made that statement I would have ignored the offer; but I knew that Payne knew what he was talking about We loaded on 4200 pounds of rice to land at Fort Hertz and went over the Naga Hills to Burma. As I sat there being Long John Payne's copilot, co-pilot, my thoughts were on this happy-go-lucky flyer. He had been an Eastern Airlines pilot for nine years before coming into the Air Corps. As he said, he'd let down Into Atlanta At-lanta so many times in the smoke and fog that the bad weather of Burma didn't worry him much. When Johnny first Joined the ferry command he came into prominence by originating a saying that to us exemplified our feelings about the whole affair in Burma. Johnny had Said. "If at first vnn rlnn't iiiiH give up, for no one in this country gives a damn anyway." We got over Fort Hertz pretty quickly and circled the little cleared place on top of a hill. The single runway, if you could call it that, waa just nine hundred feet long. There were tracks where ships had landed, but we found later that they had been slow RAF biplanes. There was a makeshift bridge at one end two trees across a stream and four markers made from dead trees which showed the other end of the "runway." Everything else was Jun-gle. Jun-gle. As Payne throttled the engines for the landing, he let down the wheels and said in his nonchalant way: "When I say okay, give me full flaps then if I don't hit the first ten feet of that field, spill 'em, for we'll go around again." Well, Johnny Payne brought that heavy ahip in like a master. He didn't hit the first ten feet I honestly honest-ly think he put those wheels down on the first toot of the available runway, run-way, and we had stopped at least fifty feet before we got to the other end. You ask a transport pilot If eight hundred feet Isn't a damn good landing. Johnny stayed back to unload the ahip and guard It for the Japs were supposed to be fairly close and we had learned that when people are In tht panic ot evacuation and star vatiun you can trust no one. I walked down tht trail to contact the General of tht Fifth Chinese Army. I wanted to ask him if he was getting get-ting tht rict, and find out why he needed rict when there were bullocks bul-locks all around; I guess I really wanted to set for myself if tht stories sto-ries ot sickness and starvation were true. What I taw and found was proof enough. General Ho took me about three miles down the road that led to Su-prabum, Su-prabum, and I counted fifty-Ova bodies bod-ies of soldiers who had riled either of cholera or from starvation. At I walked among them, with tht harsh smell of death In the air, this Chinese Chi-nese General told me that hit soldiers sol-diers had been killed trying to get bullocks from tht Burmese. You see, tht Burmese art Buddhialt, and It it against their religion to eat meat or to set tht sacred bullocks tlaughttred. Wt must keep on dropping drop-ping rict or tht tntlrt army would ttarvt, said tht General. And we kept It up, dropping over two million mil-lion pounds Into Burma before tht armlet were tvaeuated Into India tor re-equipment (TO Bt CONTINUED) |
